ETCFamily: Trip to Italy Part 2b: Florence

Florence is famous for being the birthplace of the Renaissance. It was also the seat of the D'Medici family, which might be why it was the birthplace of the Renaissance. They were rich and powerful, patrons of the arts and produced 2 Popes, including the one who excommunicated Martin Luther. Unfortunately we didn't visit any of their churches or burial places.

The apartment we stayed in was very close to all the famous places in Florence and we walked to all of them. Here is a view from the back balcony of our apartment. The front was an unremarkable door in a wall of connected houses and apartments the whole block long. In fact, it was like one huge building a block on each side with an open courtyard in the center that all of the building/apartments looked out onto.

Here's what we visited:
The Duomo (cathedral) of Florence is very beautiful with its green and pink marble. It's different from many cathedrals because it doesn't have lots of small chapels on the sides. The inside is one large room with the alter up front.

You just come upon it as you're walking down narrow streets and you don't see it until you're very close.

Next to the Duomo is its Baptistery. Babies and converts couldn't enter the cathedral until they had been baptized so all big cathedrals had a separate baptistery close by. This one is famous for its three sets of bronze doors with panels carved with Bible scenes. Michelangelo called one set of doors "The Gates of Paradise".

This is looking down the street towards the octagonal-shaped Baptistery at the end. You can't even see the Duomo which is to the left at the end of the street.

The Palazzo d'Vecchio was once a D'Medici home and then became the center of government of the city-state of Florence when they moved to the Pitti Palace. In the same piazza is an open air museum with several statues, including a copy of David by Michelangelo. The original used to stand there in front of the Palazzo, but now it is in a museum. My second favorite statue here, after David, is The Rape of the Sabine Women. (I don't love the nudity but I love the spiral pattern the people make.)

It's hard to see but David is under the blue thing on the Palazzo and the Sabine Women is in the lower right corner of the picture.

The Pitti Palace is huge and houses several galleries including clothing, treasures, modern art, royal apartments, porcelain and Renaissance art. You can also visit the gardens of the palace called the Boboli Gardens. We couldn't take pictures inside the galleries, bummer, except a few I got with my phone.

I guess rich people get to have water features inside their homes.

This was in the treasures gallery. Lots of big, old books with calligraphy and art.

Jason had Grandma's camera and took hundreds of pictures for us. There are several different views of these turtles, who must have carried this obelisk all the way from Egypt on their backs.

This is outside the Porcelain museum in the Boboli Gardens

From the Boboli Gardens you can see out over all of Florence. Rand is trying to hold up the dome and clock tower of the Duomo. To the right is the tower of the Palazzo d'Vecchio.

The Santa Croce Basilica is beautiful too but it's claim to fame, in my opinion, is all the people that are buried inside. Galileo, Leonardo Da'Vinci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Marconi (inventor of radio), and many others. When we went to the Santa Croce we didn't have our cameras because we had just finished touring the Uffizi museum, where cameras aren't allowed. So all I have are pictures from my phone which aren't very good. I took pictures of the tombs of all the famous people but you can't really read the writing.

I think that must be Michelangelo buried back there.

That's Machiavelli.

The Accademia and Uffizi museums are the big ones in Florence. No picture taking inside. It was of course very interesting to wander around inside them and see examples of art from different time periods including many famous pieces from Michelangelo, Leonardo Da'Vinci, Raphael and others. The early art is very flat and stylized and has lots of gold in the background. The Renaissance brought more realistic art with depth and real colors and with people painted as they are, not as they would wish to be. The most famous thing in the Accademia is the original statue of David, which was very impressive in it's huge rotunda display. I got this picture from the internet. I never realized before seeing it like this that David is holding one end of his sling in the hand on his shoulder and the othe end, with a stone, in the hand at his side. The sling is resting down his back. The books all make a point of his larger than life left hand with the veins bulging representing the power of God. They also note his pose is strong and confident and he looks like he is sizing up Goliath before slinging that stone.

This picture is from two different angles. That's not two Davids next to each other. Below is another David by another artist showing a different interpretation altogether.

Also in the Accademia are 4 or 5 purposefully unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo that illustrate how he sculpted. Other sculptors would make drawings and plans and make marks on the marble before chiseling. He would just start at the front and "let what was in there come out". These are called The Prisoners because they are like prisoners in the stone trying to emerge. I particularly liked them too. It's a good thing we couldn't take pictures in the museums or I'd be trying to give a several pages long and very amateur art lesson.

Wherever the tourist attractions were we would always see these guys dressed up and painted and standing on boxes with collection plates in front of them. They were all very creative and would come to "life" and pose for a picture if you put money on their plate. There were also tons of cheap markets that were fun to browse in and lots of beautiful, lovely gelaterias.